Awesome, no idea where we'll end up but I'll genuinely come say hello and if you have any power needs at all, you're more than welcome to use my ugly piece of shit.

- I appreciate all the advice that's been given and have thanked several people, but there's no need for the salty attitudes, or telling people in the baffle thread that no baffle will be any good. If people don't like salty attitudes in return, I'm not sure why they started... ?

Kiro wrote:a little more understanding and a little less pompous indignation would be helpful, and, you know, nice. <3

I'm genuinely sorry if I seem that way, I'm really trying to save you from the expensive learning curve I went through! It would have been cheaper if I hadn't bought all those loud sets that all got sold at a loss or given away.
They suck that much!

That's a huge electric draw for A/C... does your RV have two A/Cs on it?
I run a 13.5K BTU A/C on a pair of EU2000s with enough left over to run the microwave at same time.

Your problem is probably the battery charger/converter in your RV, and maybe electric water heater element if it has that. If you shut that extra stuff down when you run the A/C you'll free up a lot of watts.

GreyCoyote: "At this rate it wont be long before he is Admiral Fukkit."Delle: Singularly we may be dysfunctional misfits, but together we're magic.

Kiro wrote:We're planning on trying to camp on the outskirts of the city somewhere to keep the hum to ourselves.

That can work, it's hard to build a baffle that will make the noise disappear but you can direct it away somewhat with just a three-sided plywood box - that was the standard Burning Man setup until the early 2000's when quieter units became readily available.

Just check the map carefully and avoid the side facing Walk-In Camping, usually on the 3:00 side of town. Maybe even sorta gravitate toward 10:00-ish since that's a Large-Scale Sound area.

GreyCoyote: "At this rate it wont be long before he is Admiral Fukkit."Delle: Singularly we may be dysfunctional misfits, but together we're magic.

I made a great baffle using a three piece folding futon frame placed upside down on top of the generator frame. The hinged sides drape down over each side, with the front open for cords and the rear for exhaust. Then I put a futon on top of the frame. The wood kept the futon far enough away from the hot parts of the genny and the hinges allow easy access to the controls and gas spout. An even simpler design for a smaller size genny used two long pieces of about 2' wide wood placed in an inverted "V" over the generator with a futon and blankets over the top. I find those boxy designs can end up acting like resonance chambers.

We made a genny from an old 5hp engine and an alternator, we added a good muffler and it was the engine noise that made it sound like a paint shaker, the exhaust was quiet, the engine was not.

We found the best genny out there WITHOUT spending $$$$$$$, use 12volt to 120volt invertors and run your car, yes that is right your car, cars now are quite and you can barely hear them. Bring extra gas as you would anyway with a genny, make sure to save 5 gals to get to Gerlach to fill up on the way home. (you can even fill up in gerlach and your car has a built in gas storage unit called a gas tank.) Invertors are cheap and you allready have a car, make sure to only run the invertors when the car is running so not to drain your car battery, or even better get a deep cycle battery (or 2) and charge it when you are running your car, then use that to power everything when the car is not on. The deep cycle will run for hours and only take litte time to charge it up. That way you can have power at night with ZERO noise.

I know too simple of a solution but it works really well.

Edit to add:If you are charging batteries, a genny is the worst way possible to do it as they only put out a few amps at 12volts(like 6amps), an alternator putting out 3 phase 12volts at 100 amps is soooo much better.

sardonyx247 wrote:We made a genny from an old 5hp engine and an alternator, we added a good muffler and it was the engine noise that made it sound like a paint shaker, the exhaust was quiet, the engine was not.

We found the best genny out there WITHOUT spending $$$$$$$, use 12volt to 120volt invertors and run your car, yes that is right your car, cars now are quite and you can barely hear them. Bring extra gas as you would anyway with a genny, make sure to save 5 gals to get to Gerlach to fill up on the way home. (you can even fill up in gerlach and your car has a built in gas storage unit called a gas tank.) Invertors are cheap and you allready have a car, make sure to only run the invertors when the car is running so not to drain your car battery, or even better get a deep cycle battery (or 2) and charge it when you are running your car, then use that to power everything when the car is not on. The deep cycle will run for hours and only take litte time to charge it up. That way you can have power at night with ZERO noise.

I know too simple of a solution but it works really well.

Edit to add:If you are charging batteries, a genny is the worst way possible to do it as they only put out a few amps at 12volts(like 6amps), an alternator putting out 3 phase 12volts at 100 amps is soooo much better.

Really like this idea, and quite obvious... What kinda wattage can you get out of a running car + inverter? I'm guessing it is dependant on the size/type of the inverter to some extent.

"just two indecisive cowboys, trying to play a word game." - piehole"Just apply intelligence and discretion and you should be able to get away with just about anything." - Ugly Dougly

No, it really depends on how much current your car's alternator puts out -at idle speed not freeway speed.That's not gonna be 100 amps! It'll be a lot less. I use two alternators on my mutant vehicle's engine (a car engine) and can hold a 900 - 1000 watt load through a 120 VAC inverter, and I'm using alternators that are specifically designed to put out lots of current at idle speed. And again, that's with two alternators.

Using your car plus an inverter will indeed work. It won't do what a generator can, like run A/C or any large electrical load, and idling an engine that size just to turn a small alternator is inefficient but if that's all the power you need, the gas is cheaper than buying a generator.If you have a little fuel-injected 4 cylinder car, it'll idle a long time, but if you use a truck or whatever with a big V8 you'll be amazed at how much fuel it will idle through! Test at home, get some data and bring enough.I used to use an engine-mounted air compressor on my pickup at home, but it turned out it used so much fuel it was a LOT cheaper to go buy a nice big electric compressor instead.That low-power battery charging terminal that generators like the Honda EUs is indeed a crappy way to charge batteries, but uplugging a big charger into the generator and charging with that is great.

GreyCoyote: "At this rate it wont be long before he is Admiral Fukkit."Delle: Singularly we may be dysfunctional misfits, but together we're magic.

unjonharley wrote:Remember, It takes twice the charging time it took for discharge with deep cell batteries.. Running a car for six hours??

Oh the simple car + inverter plan is far from ideal, that's for sure... low power, super inefficient, and subjects your car engine to lots of playa dust that definitely isn't good for it. But it will work if it has to.

GreyCoyote: "At this rate it wont be long before he is Admiral Fukkit."Delle: Singularly we may be dysfunctional misfits, but together we're magic.

sardonyx247 wrote:We found the best genny out there WITHOUT spending $$$$$$$, use 12volt to 120volt invertors and run your car, yes that is right your car, cars now are quite and you can barely hear them.

Riffing a bit on this ...

For small loads -- things you could charge with a small solar system like a few strings of LED lights and some battery chargers -- this setup would work great. But the car battery is only good for little things like this. Its primary function is as a starting battery and, as such, would be ruined by getting discharged to 50% a few times in a week. (E.g. a small car might have a 50 amp-hour battery at 12 volts, so that's 600 watt-hours of energy, but don't want to discharge it more than 15% or so, so you can only use 90 watt-hours of energy before starting the car and charging it back up. Thus, 5 watts of LED lights for 10 hours would use 50 watt-hours at night and 1.5 watts of battery chargers for 24 hours would use 36 watt-hours, and that's about all it can muster.)

To move up one level to more power, say for a modest sound system (200 watts peak; 50 watts average) I'd recommend buying a deep-cycle battery. When you get to the Playa, disconnect the car's battery and insert the deep-cycle battery in its place. A big 180 amp-hour deep-cycle battery can be run down to 50% capacity, so that's 90 amp-hours or 1,080 watt-hours. You could run 45 watts 24 hours a day with that and charge it once a day. (Or, if you do the math, you can run 6 watts for the whole week straight — or 12 watts each night — and never need to recharge the battery at all.)

But Captain Goddammit is right: you're only going to get a few amps at idle ... maybe 15 amps if you're lucky, so making up that 90 amp-hours is going to take 4 hours of idling the car. In one of the hottest places on earth. Not a wise idea.

But if you went with the big deep-cycle and got a solar panel barely adequate for your needs. (Remember that you only get 6 hours equivalent of bright noon sun: one true hour at noon, but less power each hour before or after noon.) So you go with a 100 watt solar panel and get 600 watt-hours each day. Now you only need to make up the remaining 400 watt-hours with the car (which at 15 amps at 12 volts produces 180 watts) which is still 2 hours of idling. If you cut back your consumption more, you could get away with most days being completely charged by the solar panel and only use the car if you need a boost.

Captain Goddammit wrote:If you have a little fuel-injected 4 cylinder car, it'll idle a long time, but if you use a truck or whatever with a big V8 you'll be amazed at how much fuel it will idle through! Test at home, get some data and bring enough.

I drove a friend of mine's Honda Fit for a bit. It has one of those gas mileage gauges (which is now computerized and relatively accurate compared to a vacuum gauge marked out in MPG). On a long side street, I dropped the car in neutral (thus, the engine was idling) and coasted down until the gauge read 40 miles per gallon; that was at about 10 miles per hour, and (40 miles/gallon)/(10 miles/hour) maths out to 4 hours/gallon.

I drove a friend of mine's Honda Fit for a bit. It has one of those gas mileage gauges (which is now computerized and relatively accurate compared to a vacuum gauge marked out in MPG). On a long side street, I dropped the car in neutral (thus, the engine was idling) and coasted down until the gauge read 40 miles per gallon; that was at about 10 miles per hour, and (40 miles/gallon)/(10 miles/hour) maths out to 4 hours/gallon.

This may sound good on paper.. Your alternator will not produce much at 10mph.Even if you rev it up to start.. The power will drop off after a few seconds..If you need that much power to run your camp.. Your not camping anymore.. You are "Moving on up"

My mv for this year is a pusher wheel hi-breed. One hp gas engine spinning an old generator.. With the old style "breaker point" type regulator.. Running into two lead acid batteries for 24 volt output.

Zhust wrote:I drove a friend of mine's Honda Fit for a bit. It has one of those gas mileage gauges (which is now computerized and relatively accurate compared to a vacuum gauge marked out in MPG). On a long side street, I dropped the car in neutral (thus, the engine was idling) and coasted down until the gauge read 40 miles per gallon; that was at about 10 miles per hour, and (40 miles/gallon)/(10 miles/hour) maths out to 4 hours/gallon.

Ironically your estimate is pretty close, a car like that does typically idle through 1/4 to 1/3 gallons/hr... but I fail to see how vehicle speed during a coast down test, which is mostly a factor of rolling resistance, has anything to do with testing static-state hourly consumption.

GreyCoyote: "At this rate it wont be long before he is Admiral Fukkit."Delle: Singularly we may be dysfunctional misfits, but together we're magic.

Zhust wrote:I drove a friend of mine's Honda Fit for a bit. It has one of those gas mileage gauges (which is now computerized and relatively accurate compared to a vacuum gauge marked out in MPG). On a long side street, I dropped the car in neutral (thus, the engine was idling) and coasted down until the gauge read 40 miles per gallon; that was at about 10 miles per hour, and (40 miles/gallon)/(10 miles/hour) maths out to 4 hours/gallon.

Ironically your estimate is pretty close, a car like that does typically idle through 1/4 to 1/3 gallons/hr... but I fail to see how vehicle speed during a coast down test, which is mostly a factor of rolling resistance, has anything to do with testing static-state hourly consumption.

Lol, it's not really even rolling resistance, it's more of a measure of how steep the hill is.

Captain Goddammit wrote:Ironically your estimate is pretty close, a car like that does typically idle through 1/4 to 1/3 gallons/hr... but I fail to see how vehicle speed during a coast down test, which is mostly a factor of rolling resistance, has anything to do with testing static-state hourly consumption.

*Facepalm* I had the car in neutral. The fuel use at idle was (essentially) constant but the mpg monitor was still calculating it as if the car was in gear. So to ascertain the fuel usage, I slowed until the gauge hit an arbitrary value — 40 mpg was right in the middle, so I picked that. The efficiency gauge was reporting miles/gallon which is (miles/hour)/(gallons/hour) so I just did a little algebra to get gallons/hour = (miles/hour)/(miles/gallon).